Is a “natural born Citizen” Video on the Horizon?

by Sharon Rondeau

(Nov. 11, 2023) — On Saturday morning, P&E reader Jonathan David Mooers received a newsletter from PragerU, a non-profit foundation launched in 2011 by Dennis Prager and Allen Estrin specializing in brief informational videos aimed at educating the public, particularly young people, on current events and issues.

Having conceived of the idea of an online media platform two years prior, in 2011 Estrin and Prager approached Marissa Streit, who Estrin said “became the CEO of Prager University; she built PragerU.”

As of 2015, with the help of its newly-minted marketer, Craig Strazzeri, the organization revamped its purpose from “an educational institution” to a “real media company,” Strazzeri said in a 2021 video titled “The PragerU Story.”

The email Mooers received reads:

Dear PragerU Supporter, 

Do you enjoy watching PragerU videos? 

Has one of our videos ever influenced your views, changed your mind, or impacted your life?

We want to hear from you!

Please take a few minutes to share your thoughts in this short survey. 

At PragerU, our mission is simple: to share the most valuable ideas, knowledge, and wisdom from the greatest minds, with a classroom the size of the Internet. 

We’re always looking for ways to improve but how can we know if we’re on the right track without getting feedback from great supporters like you?

Your input will help us assess where we’re making the most impact and how we can do better when it comes to educating millions of young people with the truth about history, economics, America, and today’s most important issues. 

We value your opinion and can’t wait to hear what you think! 

Sincerely, 

Your PragerU team

Mooers replied to the email with:

I would like to do a 5-minute video on PragerU on John Jay’s invention and intention of “natural born [U.S.] Citizen”, a subject matter that I have studied for some 10 years now.

Comments?

Thank you, PragerU

JD Mooers, PE, MBA, MADE IN USA

The Post & Email asked Mooers if he also responded to the survey, to which he replied:

Yes, I did fill out the survey praising PragerU for helping to “free one’s mind-slavery of preconceived notions” with their fact-focused 5-minute videos. 

If PragerU will not do a 5-minute video on “natural born Citizen” to “free one’s mind-slavery of preconceived notions”, THEN THE POST & EMAIL SHOULD DO THEIR OWN VIDEO(s), OK?

He further expounded:

Suggested 5-minute “natural born Citizen” video contents:

1. “natural born Citizen” is John Jay’s invention honoring John Jay’s intentions to maintain a non-foreign-allegiances Commander-in-Chief 

2. Cite U.S. Constitution Article II “natural born Citizen” clause; still the law of the land qualifier for U.S. Presidents 1789- TODAY

3. “natural born Citizen” not defined in Constitution, but neither is “liberty” and “pursuit of happiness”, et al; John Jay was asked about Constitution’s lack of definitions and he said follow the Constitution as closely as you morally can, recognizing that you can not do whatever you want as that would be lawless   

4. From 1789- 08-28-08, all previous generations evidently defined “natural born Citizen” to mean, “born in sole-USA jurisdiction to sole-US-allegiance-citizen-parents” 

5. On 08-28-08, although Hawaii Democratic Party first refused to certify Obama as “natural born Citizen”, Speaker Pelosi over-ruled Hawaii Dems and wrongly decreed Obama a “natural born Citizen”

6. After 08-28-08, many unprecedented lawsuits followed to contest “Speaker Pelosi’s natural born Citizen”, to no avail

7. After 08-28-08, we see many multi-citizen candidates wrongly running for U.S. President and Vice President

8. With our Congress and election officials politicized weaponized criminalized since 08-28-08 into accepting “Speaker Pelosi’s natural born Citizen” definition, or else be silence/over-ruled/punished, only We the People, another three words in the U.S. Constitution, you and me as private U.S. citizens on Main Street USA, can demand return to John Jay’s “natural born Citizen” 1789- TODAY, which some 85% on USA conforms to

9. We the People can either follow our sacred gift, The U.S. Constitution, or amend it; any other political expediency around it is unlawful, void and perhaps treasonous subject to death.   

As most readers are aware, The Post & Email was launched by John Charlton in August 2009 in an effort to discover whether Barack Hussein Obama, who catapulted from an obscure, first-term U.S. senator from Illinois to the presidency in less than two years, met the requirement of the Constitution’s Article II, Section 1, clause 5 that the president and commander-in-chief must be a “natural born Citizen.”

While the Founders did not define the term, extensive research shows it once meant a person with unquestionable allegiance to the United States, necessitating both parents to have been U.S. citizens. If also born on U.S. soil, in 1872 the U.S. House of Representatives considered the individual to unquestionably be a “natural born Citizen.”

As the centuries have passed, the meaning of the term has been eroded such that most Americans now believe it simply means, “Born on U.S. soil”; hence the number of presidential candidates in recent years meeting that requirement but lacking U.S.-citizen parents at the time of birth.

Some have gone farther, claiming a naturalized citizen should not constitutionally be prevented from serving as president.

The late attorney and constitutional scholar, Herb Titus, believed that the status of an individual’s parents and not his birthplace determined whether he was “natural born.”

In contrast, the late attorney and constitutional scholar Mario Apuzzo, who himself was born outside the U.S., concluded “natural born Citizen” requires “not only birth on U.S. soil but also birth to parents who are both U.S. citizens by birth or naturalization.”

“This unity of jus soli (soil) and jus sanguinis (descent) in the child at the time of birth,” Apuzzo wrote on April 23, 2009, “assures that the child is born with sole allegiance (obligation of fidelity and obedience to government in consideration for protection that government gives (U.S. v. Kuhn, 49 F.Supp.407, 414 (D.C.N.Y)) and loyalty to the United States and that no other nation can lay any claim to the child’s (later an adult) allegiance and loyalty.”

In the case of Kamala Harris, neither parent was a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident when she was born in Oakland, CA; rather, each had gained admission to the country through a student visa. When in 2020 then-Professor of law, Chapman University and senior fellow, Claremont Institute John Eastman raised the question of Harris’s vice-presidential eligibility in a Newsweek editorial, the publication felt obligated to add a disclaimer two days later stating, in part:

This op-ed is being used by some as a tool to perpetuate racism and xenophobia. We apologize. The essay, by John Eastman, was intended to explore a minority legal argument about the definition of who is a “natural-born citizen” in the United States. But to many readers, the essay inevitably conveyed the ugly message that Senator Kamala Harris, a woman of color and the child of immigrants, was somehow not truly American.

The op-ed was never intended to spark or to take part in the racist lie of Birtherism, the conspiracy theory aimed at delegitimizing Barack Obama, but we should have recognized the potential, even probability, that that could happen. Readers hold us accountable for all that we publish, as they should; we hold ourselves accountable, too. We entirely failed to anticipate the ways in which the essay would be interpreted, distorted and weaponized.

In 1804, the passage of the 12th Amendment rendered vice-presidential candidates subject to the same requirements as the president as per Article II, a point Eastman invoked in his column.

Obama claims a birth in Honolulu, HI in 1961 to a British-citizen father and U.S.-citizen mother. On April 27, 2011, the Obama White House released what it said was a scan of a PDF of Obama’s “long-form” birth certificate stating as much to quell doubts, publicly raised by then-businessman Donald J. Trump, that Obama was eligible to the presidency.

Millions of other Americans harbored similar questions about Obama’s eligibility but were scoffed at by the mainstream media and hung up on by “conservative” radio hosts.

Ironically, it was the media which first publicly claimed Obama was born outside the U.S.

After a five-year investigation authorized by then-Maricopa County, AZ Sheriff Joseph Arpaio demonstrated the “long-form” image to be a “computer-generated forgery,” the media, political pundits and elected officials continued to ridicule the notion that Obama’s life story might not be what he claimed and/or that he was otherwise ineligible to the office.

The lead investigator of the probe, former detective Mike Zullo, identified “nine points of forgery” in a final press conference in December 2016. In March 2012, Zullo reported investigators found Obama’s Selective Service registration form to be a creation rather than a genuine document and also suggested Obama’s parents might not be those Obama has identified, Barack Hussein Obama Sr. of Kenya and Stanley Ann Dunham of Wichita, KS.

In a 16-page sworn affidavit dated November 9, 2012, Zullo pointed to inconsistencies and avoidance of questions pertaining to Obama’s birth records on the part of the Hawaii Department of Health and other state officials at the time.

Trump’s call for Obama to reveal certified birth documentation and background information gave rise to the term, “birther,” which was applied to Arpaio and anyone else publicly expressing doubt in Obama’s bona fides.

A similar phenomenon arose when millions of Americans questioned the outcome of the 2020 presidential election with the now oft-used term, “election denier.”

So, too have individuals expressing wariness of coronavirus and other “vaccines” been branded with a label clearly pejorative in its intent: “anti-vaxxer.”